Taken aback by his admission, I absently set the laptop on the floor and look at him with inquiry.
I agree with most of his views, but I just don’t want to struggle. I’ve seen it and lived it all my life and I can’t see not striving for something better.
“What’s wrong with having both?” I ask.
Luke shakes his head, his jaw tightening as he stares off at nothing.
“Some people can pull that off,” he says, “but I’m not one of them, and I don’t think there are really that many people who can. It’s true what they say—money really does change a person.”
“Is that why you called it ‘useless money’?” I point out, and when he doesn’t recall right away, I explain further. “Back in the car, when you were telling me about the business. You said there was a lot of useless money in yours and Landon’s accounts. Why was it useless?”
He seems surprised I caught that, much less that I remembered such a small and seemingly insignificant detail. “Because it was a trade,” he begins. “One that I had no idea was a trade, or what I was trading for. Otherwise I would’ve dropped my millions like a bad habit and never looked back.”
“What was the trade?” I ask with soft caution.
He pauses. “Everything,” he answers, and suddenly becomes distant, staring toward the window, lost in his thoughts. “Absolutely everything.”
Silence passes between us for what feels like forever, until Luke snaps back into the moment, smiles hugely, and jumps to his feet. He leans over and grabs my hand, pulling me up with him. Next thing I know, I can feel the heat from his body pressed to mine and he’s looking into my eyes so closely that I can feel the warmth of his minty breath on my lips. I want him to kiss me. I even find myself beginning to lean in to it, my eyelids getting heavy, but I’m also snapped back into the moment when he starts to walk with me to the door instead, and we leave the room and all of the paintings behind.
“Why don’t you change?” he suggests, pointing to the bag on the coffee table with my new clothes and white flip-flops. “Let’s go for a walk.”
While we were sitting together out on the beach, just before dark, Luke told me more about the money and the trade, elaborating a little on the wedge he mentioned that it drove between him and his brother. “I wanted to keep the money coming,” he had said. “But Landon, he wanted to give it all up. Literally give it up. I thought he was insane. Who does that? Who is poor all their life, then one day hits the jackpot and never has to worry about money again, but then wants to give it away?”
I just sat there beside him on the sand, yards from his house and listened, feeling the intensity in every word as if he thought Landon were sitting there beside us.
But as always, he seemed to tiptoe around any topic having to do with Landon. He has so much to say, so much to get off his chest, and I feel like he’s trying the only way he knows how to take that step, to reach out to someone, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
Maybe he needs a nudge.
“Luke?” I ask, now sitting on the lanai at a little round table. He looks over at me from the other side, the moonlight casting a shadow on his face. He smiles.
“Yeah?”
I hesitate, trying to make sure in my mind that it’s OK to open this door to him, and that I’m not making our inevitable separation more difficult by becoming the shoulder I sense he desperately needs.
“What’s really bothering you?” I ask softly, trying to be comforting; it hurts my heart to see his hurting. “I’m here for you if you need someone to talk to.”
Luke’s chin draws back, his smiling eyes eclipsed by hardening eyebrows. “Nothing’s bothering me, Sienna,” he says, and although it sounds entirely believable, I don’t believe it.
He pats the table with the palm of his hand and a long, drawn-out sigh bursts through his lips.
“Damn, I am such a clueless dick sometimes,” he says. “Seriously, I didn’t mean to give you any crybaby vibes.”
“No, no,” I say, shaking my hand at him, palm forward, “you haven’t.” I follow that comment up with laughter, an instinctive reaction to combat what my question seems to have caused.
And it doesn’t go unnoticed to me that I failed miserably at my attempt to open him up on the issue.
Luke laughs out loud, tossing his head back, and then he looks right at me. “See what you’ve done to me?” He points at me with a crooked index finger. “This is your fault.”
My mouth falls open and my eyes get big.
“How is it my fault?!”
His laughter fills the night air.
“You borrowed my balls and never gave them back.”
Now I’m the one rolling with laughter.
Luke points to the back screen door. “Go in there. Right now. And get them before I start my menstrual cycle.”
I cackle, throwing my neck back over the chair.
“Hurry up!” he shouts and it just makes me laugh harder.
Finally I manage to drop my bare feet onto the wood floor of the lanai and rush into the house, the screen door slapping against my heels on the way in, and I pretend to grab his balls from my purse. And when I run back outside I present them to him in one hand. He doesn’t seem to approve, cocking an eyebrow up at me from his chair beside the table. He looks at my hand and then up at me, down at my hand again, up at me again. Realizing, I roll my eyes and bring my other hand up so that it looks like it takes both to hold them, and slowly his grin begins to lengthen.